G3-247 Report ESTONIA MARKET REPORT
The Estonian Olympic Committee, Spordiennustus, originally had a licence to operate fixed odd sports bet- ting in Estonia and is a joint venture between the Olympic committee and PAFER, Alands. The company set up
Fortuuna.ee which offered sports betting and lot- tery games and bingo.
Today most players prefer the foreign run casino sites. There are nine online gaming licences issued of which two are foreign companies. The operators include: Pafer As, Spordiennustus (Paf), Triogames, Kingswin Online, Unibet, Optiwin and Tonybet plus two casino operators with online licences Grand Prix and Olympic.
Tonybet offers all sorts of online games from sports bet- ting, live games, poker, live casino whilst Triobet Sportsbook offers betting on global and local events whilst TrioBet’s Poker room is said to be the biggest in the Baltics and part of Microgaming’s poker platform.
The first land-based operator to obtain a poker room licence was Olympic Entertainment Group who part- nered with Playtech to offer more than 150 casino games and online poker. Later PokerStars launched a sponsored live tournament in Estonia and was also one of the first sites to obtain an activity licence in the coun- try.
Online gaming revenue has
enabled the country to recover from economic difficulties. Before this the state run sportsbook Spordiennustus
offered the first online gambling facilities back in 2004.
Meanwhile taxes for the online sector are five percent for betting and remote gambling operators on their net profit.
Estonian based server came under question at the European Union in terms of possible violations and pro- hibiting free competition. Today the law states that if the server is not located in Estonia “the organiser of remote gambling shall, before starting to use the server for the organisation of remote gambling, provide the Tax and Customs Board with evidence that the gambling supervisory authority and the authority dealing with prevention of money laundering in the country of loca- tion of the server have a legal basis and possibilities to cooperate with the Tax and Customs Board and Financial Intelligence Unit.”
There are to date over 1,000 blocked illegal online gam- ing domain names listed on the Estonia Tax and Customs Board.
Online gaming revenue has enabled the country to recover from economic difficulties. Before this the state run sportsbook Spordiennustus offered the first online gambling facilities back in 2004.
SPORTSBETTING The main operators in the sportsbetting sector include Totalisaator AS, Pafer AS and Spordiennustus who oper- ate
PAF.com.
Meanwhile Olympic Casino provides sports betting in Estonia under the Olybet brand and these are located in all of the company’s casinos. Bets are placed through Olybet before or during an event and all sports bars have betting terminals and TV screens. This is available at all Olympic Estonian casinos.
In August 2013 Olympic Entertainment Group expanded its online business into the sports betting sector in both Estonia and Latvia with the introduction of OlyBet. OEG was one of the first online licensed operators in Latvia and today all the casinos and slot halls in Estonia oper- ated by Olympic have the OlyBet system in place.
OlyBet offers a pre-match and live in-play sports bet- ting service and customers can watch a wide variety of competitions and matches and can either place a bet or just enjoy the sports on the screen.
ESTONIA: Vital Statistics Capital: Tallinn Population: 1,340,415 Land Area: 45,228
sq.km Currency: Euro Median age: 41.2 years Languages: Estonian (official) (68.5%), Russian (29%), Ukrainian (0.6%) Ethnic Groups: Estonian (69%), Russian (25%), Ukrainian (1.7%), Belarusian (1%) Government: Parliamentary Republic Chief of State: President Toomas Hendrik Ilves Head of Government: Taavi Roivas Cabinet: Ministers appointed by the prime minister approved by Parliament Elections: President elected by Parliament for a five year term (eligible for second term). If candidate does not secure two thirds of the votes after three rounds of balloting then an electoral assembly elects the President.
OlyBet is an open platform and has been created and delivered in partnership with e-gaming software devel- oper Iforium. It offers casino product from Playtech and Microgaming.
LOTTERY The work behind developing a lottery in Estonia began back in 1971 with the first lotto 6/49 loto draw held in that same year.
In 1991 state owned Eesti Loto was born and today this company operates Bingo Loto, Keno Loto, Viking Loto and Euro Jackpot lotteries. Other lotteries can only be operated for the purpose of charity.
Before 2010 this company had a 90 percent market share but since this date most other licenses for lottery operators have expired and it has become increasingly difficult to obtain new licences so Eesti Loto pretty much remains the monopoly.
In 2009 the Prime Minister at the time suggested pri- vatising the company to help with the budget but as of yet it remains state property.
In 2002 the company began to sell tickets online and via mobile in the same year. In 2004 the company went over to a new online lottery system.
The Gambling Act states that money from the lottery must go to allocated charities and 32 per cent goes to science and education projects, 22 per cent for Olympic Committee, 10 percent to other sports projects, 32 per- cent to welfare projects and four percent to cultural projects. Players must be aged 16 and over to play the lottery.
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